Device Set Off Near La Guardia

Note With Swastika Mentions Waco Raid

October 15, 1995|The New York Times

NEW YORK - — An explosive blew out part of the wind-shear detection system serving La Guardia Airport on Friday afternoon, officials said, causing no air-traffic-control problems but raising concerns about who might have set off the device and why.

A one-page handwritten note found at the site linked the incident to the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound outside of Waco, Texas, in February 1993. "This is in response to the Waco incident, for all our fallen brothers," the note read. It also carried a scrawled swastika.

The FBI said it was unclear whether the attack was simply vandalism, the work of copycats duplicating the attack on an Amtrak train in Arizona last week or an act of terrorism by an organized group. "We are going to take it seriously until we know that we should not take it seriously," said Joseph Valiquette, a spokesman for the FBI in New York City.

The police were classifying the explosion as a crime of criminal mischief, but Deputy Inspector Robert Martin, head of the Police Department's special investigations division, said, "We're giving it some significance because of the timing with the anniversary of the U.N. and, of course, other terrorist acts. We are thinking that this is serious."Neither Martin nor the FBI would say what kind of explosive was used.

The explosion occurred at 4 p.m. Friday at the old Flushing Airport across the bay from La Guardia, police said. A police spokeswoman, Officer Kathleen Kelly, said someone had cut through the fence surrounding the old airport and attached "an improvised explosive device" next to what is called a low-level wind-shear alert system remote center.

The equipment, mounted on a utility pole, is one of six remote centers that measure wind speed and direction and send that information to a central computer at La Guardia. Officials at the airport said the explosion never jeopardized air traffic. The wind-shear detection system was fully operational by Saturday morn-ing.

Agents of the FBI and members of the New York City police terrorism task force were at the site Saturday, inside a fenced-in area of the old Flushing Airport. A 40-foot-high wooden pole held the damaged equipment. Wind-measuring devices are attached at the top of the pole, and a 2-foot-high, 18-inch-wide box, destroyed by the explosion, was connected at the base.

On Saturday afternoon, the fencing above the cage's gate was completely cut away, leaving a rectangular hole and access to the box. "It's not your usual telephone pole," Deputy Inspector Martin said. "It's possible it looked like something sophisticated to them."The box, he said, is charred and "everything inside is scorched."